Note: While these sites may contain information of value to you, the Education and Social Science Library and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign do not endorse the sites or the information they contain. For more information and current research on rankings, we encourage you to read some of the articles listed in our College Rankings Bibliography and to see our Caution and Controversy page. For questions or comments, please contact Nancy O'Brien.
[http://www.asian-nation.org/best-colleges.shtml]
Methodology: This website excerpts information from the article "The Best Colleges for Asian Americans" in A. Magazine (September 30, 2000).
Asian-Nation's website includes the top 25 universities and the top 25 liberal arts colleges for
Asian Americans along with Asian American college students' commentary provided from A. Magazine's
article. This website only lists a portion of the results from A. Magazine's survey. The article
notes some fallacies of the survey, such as depending on the colleges/universities to report
statistics as well as certain notable schools that did not participate in the survey. For more
information see:
Chan, Anita and Dina Gan. "The Best Colleges for Asian Americans."
A. Magazine (September 30, 2000), pg. 39.
[http://www.blackenterprise.com/diversity/top-colleges]
Methodology: The rankings methodology is stated in the section "Crunching the Numbers".
In addition to a listing of the top 50 colleges for African Americans, this article includes information on financial aid and scholarship opportunities. Only the top 10 colleges are available. Registration is required to view all of the top 50 colleges.
[http://www.collegeprowler.com/find/by-ranking.aspx]
Methodology: This site offers no separate delineation of its methods.
This site offers rankings of "the top two-hundred schools in America" in categories that range from academics, athletics, transportation, and computers to guys, girls, nightlife, and campus dining. Individual schools are given grades in twenty subjects, and while there is no explanation for the grading system, student quotes are offered for each school.
[http://www.ccweek.com/Top_100_Archives.aspx]
Methodology: This site compiles its rankings based on degree conferral statistics that the individual schools provide to the US Department of Education. More information is provided in the introduction to the list.
Community College Week's annual list provides data on an area of higher education often missing from traditional college rankings: associate's-degree-granting two year programs. While CCW is to be commended for attempting to fill this gap, a word of caution: the lists are based solely on the total number of degrees awarded. Other factors, like instructor-to-student ratio or student satisfaction, are not taken into account. This means that, in general, a community college with 1000 students will rank 10 times higher than one with 100 students, because the raw number of degrees awarded will be higher in most instances. Retention of students until graduation may affect degrees conferred, however. In addition to the primary top 100 list, several additional lists are provided that break down degree conferrals by ethnic groups and by programs of study.
[http://consusrankings.com/category/colleges-universities/consus-group-colleges-universities/]
Methodology: This site offers an explanation of its methods on a page titled Rankings Methodology.
The Consus Group (TCG) ranks the over top 100 colleges and universities in the U.S. The scores are based on several factors: other published rankings, selectivity and yield. TCG also offer two other rankings based solely on Published Rankings and Selectivity Rankings.
[http://www.convergemag.com/awards/digital-community-colleges/41775337.html]
Methodology: These rankings are based on community college officials' questionnaire responses and school data.
Created by the Center for Digital Education and the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), this survey, ranks the top ten tech-savvy community colleges in the categories of large (7,500 students or more), mid-size (3,000-7,500 students) and small (less than 3,000 students) community colleges. The survey is run every two years and past survey results are listed. The past Digital Community Colleges Survey Reports are available for free download, but registration is required.
[http://www.hispaniconline.com/HispanicMag/2008_03/Feature-25Colleges.html]
Methodology: The introduction states that "myriad sources" were used to compile the list, including the colleges themselves, the U.S. News & World Report annual college rankings, and Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education. Beyond noting that they "looked for schools whose student populations were at least 8 percent Hispanic," the list editors don't offer further details on the specific statistics they used, or how they were weighted.
Hispanic Magazine publishes this annual list of "superior centers of higher learning where Hispanic students are thriving." The list editors point out that, "Critical to Hispanics' ability to succeed is whether or not they actually earn degrees from the universities they attend"; consequently, they look not only at colleges' overall academic reputations and Hispanic enrollments, but at the number of degrees actually conferred to Hispanic students. Brief descriptions, drawing on the Fiske and Peterson's guides to colleges, are provided for each school, as well as tuition rates and the percentage of Hispanic students. Because the school descriptions are compiled from general college guides, many make only passing mention of Hispanic academic or social life on the campuses, but most specify where the college ranks in total numbers of graduating Hispanic students.
[http://www.collegeandcharacter.org/guide/]
Methodology: This site offers an explanation of its methods on a page titled Identification & Selection Process.
This site identifies colleges and universities that promote the development of moral character by emphasizing character-building as an integral part of their students' experience. The Exemplary Programs section examines 405 college programs designed to foster character development. The Presidential Leadership section identifies 50 college and university presidents who "demonstrate a personal commitment to a wide variety of character-development activities and issues on their campuses." The Templeton Honor Roll recognizes 100 schools which "exhibit a strong and inspiring campus-wide ethos that articulates the expectations of personal and civic responsibility in all dimensions of college life."
[http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/colleges/]
Methodology: This site offers an explanation of its methods on a page titled Selecting the Best Values.
Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine offers its ranking of the top 50 values in public, four-year institutions of higher education. According to Kiplinger's, these are "schools where students can graduate with a high-caliber education, but without a mortgage-size debt. This site was first published in 1998, and has been updated with more recent cost figures.
[http://www.motherjones.com/news/outfront/2004/09/08_401.html]
Methodology: This site offers no specific delineation of its methods.
Mother Jones magazine recently unveiled its latest survey of student activism on college campuses nationwide. Descriptions of students' activities, as well as statistics on such factors as cost, enrollment, and percentage of students with financial aid are included. Also be sure to check out the Mother Jones archive for older surveys, including "Our Big Twenty Champs, '76-'96", a list of Mother Jones' top activist campuses over the last twenty years.
[http://www.newmobility.com/review_article.cfm?id=122&action=browse]
Methodology: This site offers no separate delineation of its methods, but some discussion regarding methods can be found on the opening page.
For persons with disabilities, choosing a college means more than simply evaluating an institution's academic offerings. This site from New Mobility helps students assess the disability-friendliness of 33 public institutions in the United States, evaluating them on such criteria as accessible classrooms, transportation, living accommodations, personal assistance services, and adaptive sports. The site provides an introduction to campus accessibility issues, charts of available services, outlines of the institutions including links to their home pages, tables describing the physical accessibility of each campus, and more. In addition, the top 10 campuses (including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign at number one!) are spotlighted with informative essays.
[http://collegeadmissions.tripod.com/]
Methodology: This site explains its methodology on the opening page.
This site ranks American colleges and universities on the basis of selectivity. According to the site's creator, "it takes the historical and etymological view that a college is a "chosen company" and attempts to rank colleges by the membership they attract." Among the factors used in ranking the schools are number of applicants, percent accepted, percent yield, percent of students in top tenth of high school class, and percent of freshmen returning as sophomores. Also considered is interesting data on each school's chief competitors for applicants.
[http://oedb.org/rankings]
Methodology: This site offers an explanation of its methods on a page titled Methodology.
This site ranks 21 of the nation's top online undergraduate degree granting colleges by eight different metrics. The rankings include an overall ranking and also rankings by each of the eight different metrics: Acceptance Rate, Financial Aid, Graduation Rate, Peer Web Citations, Retention Rate, Scholarly Citations, Student-Faculty Ratio, Years Accredited.
[http://www.ordoludus.com/5.html]
Methodology: This site explains its methodology on its "About Us" page.
This site ranks 126 colleges and universities by comparing 30 different areas grouped into four separate categories: academics, quality of life, sports, and cost and tuitions. These four categories are then averaged to create overall rankings. It includes both non-weighted and weighted averages in rankings. By not just solely focusing on academics, this site intends to provide a "more well-rounded view" of the college rankings. Ordo Ludus uses data from other public ranking sources to create their own rankings.
[http://www.princetonreview.com/college/research/rankings/rankings.asp]
Methodology: This site offers an explanation of its rankings on a link titled "press release."
This site presents the results of surveys completed by college students nationwide. Rankings are offered for topics ranging from the serious (Libraries, Best Overall Academic Experience for Undergraduates, etc.) to the informal and humorous (Lots of Beer, Got Milk?, etc.). For more information about how Princeton Review's rankings are compiled and what to make of them, consult the press release link on their page which provides an overview of their system.
[http://www.studentsreview.com/]
Methodology: This site offers an explanation of its rankings on a page titled 'Rankings Methodology'.
This site provides "answers to the questions college students wish they had known to ask". They collect surveys from undergraduate and graduate students who evaluate their universities based on questions in three categories: Department, University, and Social/Interactive. Please note that this is not a scientific sampling, but offers anecdotal reviews (positive and negative) of 1,400 universities and counting.
[http://mup.asu.edu/research.html]
Methodology: The rankings methodology is located in the rankings PDF.
This report identifies the top public and private research universities in the United States based upon nine quality measures. Universities are clustered and ranked according to total and federal research funding, endowment assets, annual giving, National Academy membership, prestigious faculty awards, doctorates awarded, postdoctoral appointees, and SAT scores of entering freshmen. Also available are lists of the top 200 public and private universities on each quality measure. The site includes other reports and resources on measuring university performance. The report and web-based data are updated annually in mid-summer.
[http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2329359,00.asp]
Methodology: The rankings methodology can be found at Top Wired Colleges: Methodology.
PC Magazine partnered with The Princeton Review ranks the top twenty most "wired" (or the most technology savvy) colleges. The rankings lists special technology features at each campus and highlights tuition costs. The "Survey Surprise" section features big name campuses with surprisingly poor technology rankings results.
[http://25best-distant-learning-universities.com/index.htm]
Methodology: This site offers no separate delineation of its methods.
This site offers rankings of the top twenty-five distant learning programs throughout the world. In addition, the site offers links to the top programs by subject area, including business, art and design, technology, education, health/medical/nursing, and other degree programs. Each entry offers a brief description of the program as well as a link to the program's website.
[http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/cohome.htm]
Methodology: This site offers an explanation of its rankings on a page titled About the Rankings
Updated annually, this site contains extensive information about colleges and universities in the United States, including selected undergraduate programs. The list is divided both by region and by category (National Universities, Liberal Arts Colleges, Regional Schools and Top Public Schools). Factors such as diversity, specialty schools/programs (ranked and non-ranked), and state-by-state results are ranked separately. A searchable index also provides access to the site's contents. Beginning in 2002, much of the information formerly provided free became available for purchase only from this site.
[http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf]
Methodology: Fifteen graduate schools, 5 from each of the programs in medicine, law and business, were selected as the "best" graduate schools by consensus of grad-school deans and top-recruiters combined with published graduate school rankings. These graduate schools were monitored to see where the 5,100 incoming graduate students obtained their undergraduate degrees, factoring in the size of the undergraduate institution in the overall "feeder score."
These rankings were created to show which top 50 undergraduate universities were sending (aka feeding) more students to the selected 15, elite graduate school programs in medicine (Columbia, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, University of California San Francisco, Yale), law (Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, Michigan and Yale ) and business (Chicago, Dartmouth's Tuck School, Harvard, MIT's Sloan School and Penn's Wharton School ). For more information see the related article "Want to go to Harvard Law?" by Elizabeth Bernstein published in the Wall Street Journal, September 23, 2003, page W.1.
[http://www2.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0709.rankings.html]
Methodology: The rankings are described in the article "A Note on Methodology".
This site compares rankings from other rankings sites, most notably from U.S. News and World Report, and recalculated them according to involvement in community service, research, and social mobility of students. The Methodology page provides an explanation for the criteria used. Listed are both the top 245 National Universities and the top 202 liberal arts colleges based on their criteria.
[http://whatwilltheylearn.com/]
Methodology: The criteria for their institution rankings is explained on their Rating Criteria page.
Created by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), this site aims to compare and describe the general education requirements for undergraduate students at colleges and universities. Also included on the site is the graduation rate of undergraduate students at each institution, a list of institutions with the site's top grade, and a list of schools with a tuition of $30,000 and above. The rankings criteria consider whether the institution provides required courses in the fields of composition, literature, foreign language, U.S. government or history, economics, mathematics, and natural or physical science. A, B, C, D, or F grades are awarded based on the number of requirements the institution offers.
[http://www.yaf.org/blog/Announcing-the-2007-2008-Top-Ten-Conservative-Colleges.aspx]
Methodology: This site offers no separate delineation of its methods, but the introduction explains that it looked at school programs and mission statements in compiling the list.
Young America's Foundation suggests colleges that "offer a holistic conservative experience for students"--"institutions that proclaim, through their mission and programs, a dedication to discovering, maintaining and strengthening the conservative values of their students." The foundation points out that the list is not intended to be exhaustive, and that the schools are not listed in any particular order. Annotations are offered for each school to explain why they made the list.
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Last modified by: Megean Osuchowski on 9/30/09